iNFOnews.ca contacted all nine school trustees for their response, but so far only two have commented.

“I feel the trustees were put under the bus,” says an emotional Debbie Evans, the trustee for Falkland, Ranchero and Deep Creek.

She feels the Watson Report unfairly represents the board and disagrees the community lost complete confidence in trustees.

“We are nine individuals who worked hard for our communities,” Evans says.

She says the special advisor never observed the board working as a whole and feels they were misrepresented.

“She never saw the dynamics of us working together,” Evans says, adding they were each interviewed separately and no board meetings were attended by the advisor. “We were not dysfunctional.”

As for the transfer of roughly $10.5 million in surpluses, which were in part used to pay for a new board office, Evans says she was not aware of how the money was being moved and wishes it had been used to support students.

Instead of appointing former Surrey School District superintendent Mike McKay to serve in place of the board, Evans believes the province should have allowed for a byelection so the community could vote in a new board.

“I have a concern there’s no longer community voices sitting at the table,” Evans says.

North Shuswap trustee Larissa Lutjen is also disappointed with the province’s decision and says the board was not as dysfunctional as the report made it out to be.

“To me, our biggest problem was we were struggling with not enough money and the government’s expectation of certain capacity levels at schools, and it was an impossible job to do. We were sort of falling apart because we were given such an impossible job,” Lutjen says.

“It’s very ironic the very day we’re dismissed, money comes in for rural schools, which is one of the things we struggled with the most,” Lutjen says.

She’s also concerned about local representation being missed while McKay takes the reigns. His contract is for one year and could be extended even longer.

“I think some of the communities who’ve been lobbying us are probably worried today because there’s a real distance with an appointed trustee who’s not even from the area, and with one single trustee I’m definitely worried about the local representation being gone,” Lutjen says.

She wants the community to know she appreciated the chance to represent her area.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above.

OPINION A report has recently stated that the average cost of food will inflate near double its average annual rate. This does not include fresh produce and most animal proteins. The inflation for these products may t